by Bruce Blake
She didn’t feel like drinking a chocolate shake anymore.
†‡†
The faces differed, but the setting remained unchanged. A foursome of men in their twenties occupied the table by the huge television where Marty, Todd, Phil and I used to sit. Countless nights passed as we drank and debated whatever sport was in season, back before a mad man raised from the dead took their lives. Before two of them went to Hell because of me. Before the Giants somehow managed to beat the Patriots for the Superbowl for a second time.
Fucking Eli Manning.
Sully, the bar’s namesake, was conspicuous by his absence. A woman I’d never seen before concocted my vodka sodas with a lime wedge from behind the bar normally patrolled by the red-headed bar owner. I picked up my current drink—the fifth double—and swirled the oily-looking lime juice floating atop the vodka into kaleidoscopic patterns, searching for meaning in it like it was an alcoholic Rorschach test. I raised the glass toward my lips but stopped part way.
I shouldn’t be doing this.
The liquor burned my throat as I gulped it down then waved the bartender over.
“Another one, please.”
“Good enough.”
She poured my drink, set it on the tattered coaster in front of me, then took the ten spot I offered. She made change as I picked up the drink and twirled on my stool to survey the room. I didn’t recognize anyone. Even if I did, none of them would recognize me, it had been that way since Mike brought me back to harvest souls. My ex-wife, my drinking buddies, even my son hadn’t known me. Sister Mary Therese was the only person who saw through the facade shrouding me from those who once knew me, and she’d ended up dead, too. Because of me.
At least I saved her from damnation.
I squeezed the lime wedge over the vodka soda and dropped it in, then licked juice from my fingers. Poe would be disappointed if she knew I was here, but she could have stopped it by agreeing to help. What good is a guardian angel who’s unwilling to keep you safe when you decide to go to Hell?
I downed half the drink in one gulp and savored the feel of it muddling my head.
I don’t need her anyway.
But Poe would be looking for me; she wouldn’t leave me to take a cruise through Hell without at least trying to talk me out of it. It wouldn’t work, though. Eight people died because of me, and although I harvested three, five souls languished in Hell who didn’t belong there. Maybe Hell wasn’t all biblical fire-and-brimstone, but it wasn’t unicorns-and-blowjobs, either.
I finished my drink and thumped the empty glass on the bar. I determined to leave the change as a tip, then stood and required the edge of the bar to keep me from wobbling.
Maybe I shouldn’t have ordered doubles.
“Are you all right, sir?”
“Fine.”
“Can I call you a cab?”
I wondered briefly if, when I told her I did, she’d say ‘you’re a cab’, then waved my hand dismissively and only stumbled once on my way to the door. Outside, a dusting of snow had collected on the ground, and the white stuff continued to fall. I hiked my collar up and wondered how, in this winter wonderland, a guy might find his way to Hell.
Bruce Blake-All Who Wander Are Lost
Chapter Five
The snow stopped during the night but, since I didn’t crawl out of bed until after noon, I couldn’t say exactly when it did. The guy behind the desk of the motel I stumbled into after leaving Sully’s tried to charge me for a second day—check out time was eleven—but I convinced him a couple of bucks for his own pocket was a better choice.
Two inches of fluffy powder crunched under my feet and billowy clouds hung over the city threatening more. By the time I reached the park, it was criss-crossed by tracks marring the winter wonderland, but a layer of untouched snow covered the bench next to the pond. I cleared a spot for my ass and sat down to commune with the ducks, the bag of bread I’d bought on the way dangling in my hand.
My banishment had precluded me from visiting the place where Father Dominic took Sister Mary Therese’s life. I stared out at the pond, the ducks amending their paths toward me, and felt thankful I’d gotten the Sister in time; I couldn’t have forgiven myself if the woman who’d been so good to me—to everyone in the world—went to Hell because I was a vindictive prick.
I shifted on the bench and felt snow melting through my pants as I looked over my shoulder at the near-empty park. No one was in the meadow rolling balls of snow into Parson Brown yet: too early in the year.
I shouldn’t be here.
The police would likely consider me the prime suspect in the death of Detective Williams. I didn’t care. Soon, I’d be gone to Hell to reverse what I’d done. Somehow.
And I might not come back.
Heart brimming with remorse, I leaned forward and tossed a chunk of bread onto the webfoot-trampled snow at the edge of the pond. Three green-headed drakes and two brown females flapped and quacked to retrieve the food. The sound reverberated in my aching head.
One more excellent reason not to drink.
This spot was Sister Mary-Therese’s favorite, feeding the ducks one of her most-loved pastimes. Whether the ducks survived the winter without her donations didn’t worry me—I was here because feeding them made me feel connected to her, so I threw another piece of bread despite my hangover’s protestations. My choices for connection were lacking these days, so feeling connected to someone—even someone dead, even ducks—seemed particularly important.
A tiny avalanche started in the upper limbs of the ancient willow over-hanging the pond, the tumbling snow collecting and growing as it sieved through the lower branches. I looked up and saw the flutter of wings amongst the latticework of branches, but couldn’t see the bird causing the disturbance. I squinted, shielded my eyes, and saw movement in the top of the tree; about a dozen birds had taken up perches high in its branches. Their presence lifted my mood as I sensed someone on the bench beside me.
Gabe.
I faced her, happy to have someone to talk to, though her arrival meant another scroll, another death, more work. When I saw the woman seated beside me, the greeting tickling the edge of my tongue died an early death.
Instead of Gabe’s pixie-cut gingerbread hair, golden eyes and freckles, the woman beside me wore her black hair long and straight, framing her blue eyes and pale cheeks. A stud shone below her lower lip and part of a tattoo that looked like it might be the end of a dragon’s tail coiled around the top of her bare arm. I didn’t know who she was, but her lack of warm clothes on a chilly day told me what she was.
“Hi,” she said smiling.
“Who are you?”
A bird perched in the tree squawked as if chastising me for my lack of politeness. The woman didn’t take the same offense and extended her hand.
“Piper.”
“Piper. As in--”
“Like the Pied Piper. I’m not too fond of rats, though. Or children.”
“And you’re an--” I glanced around to ensure no one was within earshot. “An angel?”
“Oh, see? They said you were a smart one, and they were right.”
In spite of the sarcasm smothering her words like an excess of butter on a slice of toast, a blush came to my cheeks.
“Why are you here?”
She leaned back, one arm draped across the back of the bench, and gazed into my eyes. I couldn’t have looked away if my clothing was on fire.
“They sent me.”
“They who?”
“You know...them.” She raised her eyes skyward.
My eyes flickered toward the billowy clouds, then back. She didn’t mean the clouds, I was pretty sure. No surprise there; only one question remained.
“Why?”
“To watch out for you. They feel your current guardian isn’t doing the job well.”
My heart jumped. “Poe?”
“Right. Poe.”
“I don’t understand.”
She admired her manicure,
keeping me in suspense a few seconds. I leaned toward her, drawn in like a boy scout waiting for the scary part of the campfire story.
“I’m not in the know on this sort of thing, but I’ve heard rumors she’s not always there for you.”
“That’s ridiculous. She’s my guardian angel. She’s always there, watching over me.”
“Yeah? How did life go for you?”
“Well--”
“Mmm hmm. And what about when the priest died?”
“She was there when I went to harvest Father Dominic.”
A knot formed in my gut: guilt and worry and now suspicion, too. If this kept up, my future surely involved an ulcer.
“Yes, she was.”
I opened my mouth, fully intending to mock her for her ludicrous accusations, but her expression showed no sign of jest, no hint of putting me on. I hesitated, thinking about what she’d said.
Why didn’t Poe make sure I took his soul? She could have prevented everything.
The knot expanded, forcing itself through my midsection, constricting my chest. I wanted to look away from the woman, maybe turn and run from her words, but the way the light glinted on the stud below her lip held me rapt. She waited for me to speak but my reeling mind failed to remember a stitch of the English language, so she carried on.
“Frankly, whenever she’s there, things go awry. Isn’t it odd Carrions show up to so many of your harvests?”
I felt my forehead crease.
“I--I never...”
My words ran out. A few birds perched in the tree took to the air around the willow, then settled back in. Sometimes I’d thought Poe wasn’t the best guardian angel, but I assumed Carrions always showed up when someone died, assigned to the case like me.
Piper leaned closer and spoke in a whisper. “You know she’s been to Hell, don’t you?”
“She’s hinted about her past, but--”
“That’s why she won’t help. It’s also why I’m here.”
I stared at her a few seconds, my insides twisted with emotion and confusion. Poe never seemed to intentionally wrong me and always appeared to have the best intentions. I’d grown to like her in spite of her penchant for always doing what Mikey said. But what this Piper woman said made some sense. Some.
“What do you mean ‘it’s why you’re here’?”
A bird fluttered out of the tree and landed on her shoulder; it was of similar size to the swallows which accompanied Gabe, but lacked the color. Instead of a dazzling blue-green back and white breast, this bird was a uniform black with a sharp beak, like a miniature raven. It eyed me; I expected it to utter a tiny ‘nevermore’.
“I’m going to help you rescue your friends.”
I shook my head to clear whatever clogged my ears and made me hear her incorrectly. The guilt and worry bundled in my gut loosened in favor of a nervous excitement.
“You’re going to help?”
She nodded.
“Why’d Mikey change his mind?”
“Don’t know.” She shrugged and the bird bobbed up and down with her shoulders. It let out a peep of protest and she reached up to stroke its head.
Curiosity begged me to pursue this line of questioning, but I stopped myself. Why look a gift angel in the mouth? I’d already found archangels were at least as fickle as my ex-wife.
I stood and the bird on her shoulder took to the sky. The others in the tree followed.
“What do we need to do?”
“Nothing now.”
She stood and I saw she was only three inches shorter than my six-foot-two. The snow where she’d sat hadn’t melted, yet when she touched my arm, it gave me the same electric charge as when other angels touched me. The feel of her touch differed slightly, hurt a little.
“Meet me at the church at five.”
She walked away, ducks waddling out of her path as she went. I didn’t need to ask her which church, there was only one church in my life.
And it was only a few weeks ago I’d caused its destruction.
†‡†
I gaped at the sight before me as I approached the church. I’d seen pictures on the news, but the grainy, off-color image on the cheap television in my motel didn’t do justice to the wreck left in the wake of an archangel MMA brawl.
Yellow police tape encircled the church grounds, torn bits of it fluttering in the wintery breeze like a wind sock at a community airstrip. Beyond, the church was unrecognizable as a house of God. The explosion created when Mikey and Azrael clashed had toppled the steeple and knocked over three of its outer walls, leaving only the south-facing one standing. Incredibly, a stained-glass window in the wall remained intact, its depiction of the virgin Mary whole and untouched. I’d heard about this on the news, too; media and church officials called the window’s survival a miracle and it had become almost as popular as the image of Jesus burnt into a grilled cheese sandwich. Even at dinnertime on a Wednesday, the sidewalk nearest the stained glass image was jammed with people beseeching the virgin to solve their problems. They huddled inside their snow jackets, some with their faces turned Heavenward, some with their heads hung in prayer, others holding candles.
Seeing them made me want to throw a rock through the window.
If only they knew what I know.
I ducked under the police line and scurried across the lawn in a clandestine crouch to avoid being seen by the sheep on the sidewalk. As I hurried past the churchyard’s oak tree—also undamaged by the explosion—my jaw unconsciously tightened. It was the spot where muggers killed me during a spring rain storm, transforming my shitty life into a shitty after-life.
Why couldn’t the explosion have burnt the damn tree to the ground?
I skirted the debris scattered across the churchyard, some cast as far as the iron fence bounding the cemetery to the north, and averted my eyes from the oak and its unpleasant memories as I scampered toward the graveyard, putting the still-standing wall and its miracle window between me and the religious lemmings. From the edge of the rust-spotted fence, I approached the ruined church, unsure where the woman meant for us to meet. Twilight dimmed the ruins to a charcoal-pencil smear of tumbled walls and burned-out pews. I squinted and picked out a much more shapely figure standing amidst the rubble. She raised a hand, beckoning.
“Over here, Icarus.”
“Ric.” I made my way through the labyrinth of charred wood and broken rock. “Why the Hell can’t you people call me Ric?”
She didn’t respond—they never do. Something about angel physiology rendered them incapable of shortening my name to something I found bearable. My name, Icarus Fell, was a joke, a punishment. Truthfully, I’d rather be called something classier—like dickhead.
“Are you ready to go?”
I raised an eyebrow. Was she asking if I remembered to pack my toothbrush and a change of underwear?
“We’re going to Hell. Is anyone ever ready for that?”
She shrugged. “Some more than others.”
She stepped up on a fallen chunk of wall and I looked up into her blue eyes, luminescent in the waning daylight—another angelism. I tore my gaze away and surveyed the scatter of church pieces, searching for a portal to Hell; there was no blurry spot or black hole, like in the movies, no gap in the earth beneath which the river Styx flowed. The ruined church organ lay by the wall, but with my lack of keyboard-playing talent, I wouldn’t be able to play my way to Hell, though the possibility of my off-key singing one day earning me a ticket south certainly existed. I suppressed a shudder.
“What do we do now?”
She smiled, stepped off her perch, and grabbed my hand. Her angelic energy shot up my arm and into my chest, an electric tingle with an underlying heat that straddled the line between painful and euphoric. Pictures of naked flesh and exploring hands jumped into my mind; I shook my head to dispel them and concentrate on the task at hand without success. To regain control of my waylaid brain, I recalled Marty and Todd, Elizabeth Elton, Tony McSweeny—all of whom curren
tly resided in Hell because of me—but each time I brought one of them to mind, their faces morphed into Piper’s, dark hair cascading down her long neck, across her smooth shoulders. I couldn’t control my thoughts as long as her hand was on mine.
I pulled away, hands draped strategically in front of my crotch.
“What’s happening?” I asked.
She halted and faced me, an innocent smile tugging the corners of her mouth, a knowing playfulness flickering in her eyes. I struggled against the urge to reach out and stroke her cheek, to pull her to me, embrace her.
“Whatever do you mean, Icarus?”
I opened my mouth to explain but found I could only blush when I tried, like a teenager too shy to ask out the most popular girl in high school.
I wonder if Trevor is going through this?
“How...how will we get there?” I bumbled instead of explaining what I’d felt for fear of... embarrassment? Rejection?
“Just follow me.”
She didn’t take my hand this time and I sighed with relief. The reprieve allowed some of the blood which had been diverted from my brain to return. Unfortunately, the lack of her touch also allowed realization of what we were doing to creep into me, frigid fingers entwining with my spine and sending a shiver and goose bumps up my neck.
We crossed the nave, passed the unscathed altar where Father Dominic had threatened my son’s life a month before, and stopped at the base of the still-standing wall. I pulled up beside her and gazed at the blackened stone. When she didn’t do anything, I touched the stone wall, found it as solid as ever.
“I don’t get it.”
She didn’t respond, surveying the wreckage around us instead. After a moment, she strode to a charred but mostly-whole pew and picked it up like it weighed nothing. She brought it to where I stood and propped it against the wall beneath the stained glass Virgin Mary.
“Ready?”
“You asked me that already. The answer’s still: not really.”
She shrugged, smiled, and started climbing, using the pew as a ladder to the window. When she reached the top, she stepped onto the window ledge and motioned for me to follow. I breathed deep, gathering my nerves.